


Flight or Fight

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky is too, But he's struggling, Character Study, Confrontations, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Intensity, Gen, Infinity War Speculation, M/M, Misplaced Anger, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam Wilson Needs a Hug, Sam loves Cap, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, communication is key, everyone is hurting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 23:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13938072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: Sam Wilson has had his whole life turned upside down, and he's trying to hold it together, but it's coming out the edges. Bucky is done being anyone's punching bag...well, he's trying to be.Or, being a real person is hard work. A Sam & Bucky Character Study.--The breaths in Bucky’s chest are shallow, lungs refusing to fill up completely with air, lips thinning and twisting. He presses his nails into palms, once, twice, releases and makes himself walk forward, one step and then the next. Sam isn’t a threat, he tries to categorize correctly, he’s not a danger. He may not be a friend exactly, but he’s at least an ally. Steve trusts him, Sam is loyal in return, and that means however begrudgingly he is to Bucky too. It's hard to hold onto.





	Flight or Fight

**Author's Note:**

> My friend's autocorrect made Bucky into Bucket, and we fell into a long discussion about how Sam would call Bucky, Bucket, and then say "Oops, autocorrect."
> 
> Previously, we had a long conversation about Sam's small, but kind of direct, digs at Bucky throughout Civil War and why that might be, because he, of all people, should know better. Recently, an article in EW mentioned Sam had a lot of anger going into Infinity War, which fed into this. I thought those emotions might actually be partially directed at Steve, but coming out in those kind of Bucky digs/aggressions because of explored reasons, so this was born.
> 
> (Shuri responds to Bucket with Spam, and "accidentally" dyes Sam's hair pink. xD) Enjoy!

Bucky almost turns himself back on his heels more than once, he doesn’t _have_ to do this, not really. It’s not like he cares what Sam thinks exactly, but Steve does, and the unease between all of them is starting to eat away at him. He won’t say anything about it to Bucky, just like Bucky won’t say anything about it to him, and he won’t say it to Sam either, because even Bucky knows that won’t make anything better. That it’d only press the tenuous bonds between them all that much farther apart. But that hurts Steve, and Steve has lost enough already. So Bucky can do this, he can fix this, or at least puncture it, so maybe they can all find some alternative to dancing around the tension or just swallowing it down. He’s sick of  it anyway, of the slightly nauseating press of contempt wrapping around this throat, of the palated insults settling in a knot, tight in his stomach.

The door shuts behind him with a not inaudible thud, and he lurks in the back of the room for a good minute, silent. Sam knows he’s there, but he stays resolutely turned away, which is helpful in that it makes the simmering almost anger in his veins leap.

“Hey.” It drives him to say to the other, who’s settled on a sofa, book in his lap. Sam's back stiffens momentarily, head half turning across his shoulder for a beat, before falling back to the book, unchanged.

There’s a long pause where Bucky wonders if he’s going to be ignored altogether. But response comes after a fashion, though from a head still bowed, staring into pages, falsely casual.

“What’s up?”

The breaths in Bucky’s chest are shallow, lungs refusing to fill up completely with air, lips thinning and twisting. He presses his nails into palms, once, twice, releases and makes himself walk forward, one step and then the next. Sam isn’t a threat, he tries to categorize correctly, he’s not a danger. He may not be a friend exactly, but he’s at least an ally. Steve trusts him, Sam is loyal in return, and that means however begrudgingly he is to Bucky too. It's hard to hold onto.

He pushes himself into the chair next to the sofa, fingers drumming on the armrest. Sam’s eyes skirt over, half in annoyance, and he forces the motions to stop. The other still won’t look at him.

In this moment, his dearest wish is that he could be certain, that he could just push a finger into Sam’s chest and demand to know what the fuck his issue is. But he’s out of his depth here, and doesn’t know how to attack without demolishing, to press against a sore point and come out the other side better for it, instead of with everyone on the ground. He’s been too busy trying to cover up every vulnerability, which is really just all of him, to have practiced this at all. But here, he knows, he thinks he knows, he hopes anyway, maybe, he’s not the one with the problem.

“Did I, uh-” His teeth dig into his lip. He hates that he still uses pain to ground himself, and Shuri hates it more, and Steve hates it most, but it remains one of the few bedrocks of his life. Physical pain is pain is pain, no matter what self he’s wearing. A standing constancy. It comes sharp now to flood his senses as Sam’s eyes skirt over again, watching the action with a frown. Something passes over him for a moment, but dissipates away again, scattering in the next breath. Bucky presses onward anyway, because he’s started now, and it’s far enough that he wouldn’t want to have to repeat this dance again later, he bites harder and forces a gruff huff to come choking out of his throat. “Did I _do_ something to you?”

Sam muscles tense, which tenses Bucky’s reflexively, and long fingers try to turn the next page of the book casually, as though Sam’s just going to read on, but they play there, fiddling with the edge of a page, and then all at once the book snaps shut, slams onto the coffee table in front of them. Bucky tries not to flinch away at the furious movement, Sam is still staring anywhere but at him. When the other speaks, his voice is tight with anger, just barely concealed by an idle kind of false congeniality.

“You mean other than shooting at me, breaking my wings, trying to toss me off the side of a building, trying to kill me again, getting my ass thrown in jail, making me a fugitive to my country, ding dong ditching at the first chance you got, leaving me with your mopey ass boyfriend, and then sitting here and asking me if you did anything?” The onslaught comes in quick succession, word falling after word, as though they’ve only been waiting to be loosed. “Other than that?”

They sit in the thudding silence that comes in the wake of the speech, the echoes of it still loud, buzzing unsettled in the air. Bucky thinks his chest is moving, but it’s hard to tell exactly, in the leeching numbness that trails through him, somewhere maybe, also fury stirring, a ravage of anguish.  But one way or another, opening his lips, forcing noise out of his throat and forming the words. “Those things really weren’t my fault.” is almost impossibly difficult to accomplish. He’s not even really sure that he’s done it at all, the shaky cadences of his voice maybe audible only in his own mind, except Sam is snorting with a shake of his head, eyes flashing.

“Yeah?” Sam’s incredulity is louder than the tumult of adrenaline that’s rushing through him - and it, he knows, is real. “Someone else been running around with your face ripping up other people’s property?”

“In fact.” He hears himself say in a low voice, almost a hiss, closer to the soldier, his own fucked up defense mechanism. “Yes.”

It earns only another empty snort and a shake of head in response.

“But you know that.” The words shake a little, something raw creeping in at the edges. “Or do you want me to explain to you exactly what happened right before I tore off your wings? Just before I sent you flying through that door in Berlin. I can.” His chair has pushed itself around, and he’s facing Sam now, even if Sam isn’t returning the favor. “You want to hear about how far they deep fried my brain?” His hands, fists again, are shuddering, his muscles so tense, they’re vibrating too. He can’t seem to keep the corners of his vision from darkening. Sam isn’t responding though, glaring hard at nothing, so he pushes on. “I didn’t make your choices, you did.” _And_ , he wants to add, _I won’t be blamed for them_ , but though his mouth opens, the current of sound breaks, and only breath rushes out.

“You made your own too.” Sam’s voice comes quieter this time, a touch petulant - every bit as sharp. There’s an entrenched bitterness lingering.

Bucky shakes his head though, hair falling into his eyes, because even if he doesn’t exactly know it himself, can’t really understand it, he’s aware of a truth. Truth enough to stake his argument on. Shuri would tell him, Steve would, he can’t trust himself to know, but their judgment, that’s enough for him to go on. “I _didn’t._ ”

Finally, finally, brown eyes flash to his, it makes him want to hide away, to turn his face from it himself, not to have to see the war of pain and unhappiness, the deep, intense, accusation that sits there, ready to strike at him like a viper. “So you didn’t decide to just fuck off back to sleep and leave the rest of us to deal with all the fallout?” Sam’s words are hard, flat, and they lash heavy, fall as blows, against him. “Because I don’t know if you got the memo, maybe, you didn’t, I don’t know, maybe you _were_ trying to fight imaginary monsters, but Cap, he was mostly just trying to get you back, and the rest of us were along on that ride for him. So for you.” Sam’s anger is so thick, he lapses into harsh breaths, sucking in air through his teeth before he can speak again, chest moving up and down unnaturally.  

“And then you’re just up and gone again, sweet dreams in cyrospace, and we’re stuck right back where we were to start the fuck off of with, only a thousand times worse off for it.”

His finger is up and its pointed, doesn’t come into Bucky’s space, but it hangs there as though it’s sorely tempted to. To just press into his chest so he can taste the pressure behind the movement, that sits heavy. “You want _me_ to tell _you_ what going hungry, on some god forsaken mission which barely helped anyone at all, sleeping in the mud, undersupplied and underappreciated, while Cap fell apart at the seams, was like? All because we all gambled on you.”

It’s twinned inside of him. Guilt, first, always, overwhelming and drowning, but simultaneously, a massive, sickening sense of injustice sticks to his gut. Hard for him to forgive himself a lot of things, intense almost gripping need to apply blame for every single thing he's done, that was moved through his body and thrust through his limbs, will not his own, maybe, but executed through his hands, but this, of all things, this?

“I _had_ to.” It comes out a bitten off gurgle, and Sam's lip has curled, but he doesn't let him slip another word in. “I wasn't fucking safe, like you just fucking told me, so I had to. If I didn't and I went off again, that would have been-” His voice is running all over itself, worlds blurring and catching, so he forces himself to stop, teeth into his tongue until he can string thoughts together again. “Unfair. To Steve, to you, to every damn person I was near and -” He stops, voice losing steam, settling into something more barely more than a whisper, tenuous. “And to me.” He pauses as their eyes meet again, and this time, he's the one who drops away. Tired suddenly, from having pushed himself so far past every single one of the lines that haunt him. Worth, blame, right… to exist, to demand, to be. He hates the abrupt pain that coats his tongue, his own bitter disappointment at finding himself once again baring the brunt of every blow. “Kind of like the way you're being now.”

Sam's exhale is sharp through his teeth.

He leans his head back against the chair, letting himself sink heavy into it, and there's an attentional shift that pervades from the other which he isn't sure is welcome yet. But it's something.

“You don't have to like me.” He tries to explain in a rush, it's not as though he even likes himself, like he thinks Sam owes him anything. “But Hydra tried to make me feel I had any say in what I was doing, like I was agreeing to help them with any of it, and Zemo wanted everything to be my fault, and Stark-” Pain whistles through him, because that much is on him, maybe not as on him to the degree the other was prepared to make it, but enough that he deserved something retributive in exchange. “And I'm just really pretty tired of it. So I know it's easy to decide to blame me, because I kicked you off a roof, or any of the rest of it. And I _know_ I did that, but I'm really trying to know I _didn't_ too... Anyway.” One deep breath finally down into his lungs. “I didn't ask Steve to come after me, and I didn't ask you to come with him, and I'm not making you stay here now. So I'd really appreciate it if you could just-”

Sam's lips are tight, but he’s more neutral in Bucky’s ears than he was before, some of the edges shaved away from fury to frustration, discontent there, unhappiness, but it’s diffusely aimed. “Fuck off?”

The corner of his lips curves a bit. “Basically-” a breath. “Spam.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam's voice is muttered. “Guess I deserved that. The pink in the hair was too far though, man. Not cool.”

“I didn't think it was.” It's easier now that all the hard words have been spilled open into the air between them and he doesn't have to say them anymore, to pull his arms across his chest and slouch down, peering across at the other. “But I didn't tell Shuri to do it, you pissed her off all on your own.”

“She's a menace.” Sam snarks, but not convincingly.

“She's a genius.” He deadpans back. “And she can spot an asshole a mile away.”

Sam's brow quirks, and he sighs but doesn't argue.

“I don't not like you.” He says finally and Bucky’s laughter barks out of him without permission, empty and harsh, Sam winces, if only a little. “I just- it's been messed up. “ He starts, defensively. But that’s better than the pounding words of before. “Everything. It all got so ugly, so quickly, and maybe it wouldn't have, if-” His gaze flits over and then away and the guilt inside Bucky, the ever present one that chokes him especially when Steve looks at him likes he's risen the sun itself and he knows he can't even be anything compared to what has been lost, stirs to life.

But he makes himself reach for the words floating above his head again, makes himself say them. “ _Steve_ made those choices.”

Sam's nostrils flare with exhale. “I know, I know he did, but the man is trying to do right by everyone always.” He sounds a little lost himself, in that heartbeat. “Can’t be mad at him for that.”

“I'm trying too.” The answer comes quiet, and it's the only thing he can say. Maybe he's not trying hard enough, maybe he's trying but there's just no fixing him, maybe no one can see it, but he is. He’s trying. “Every damn day, because I get it, I owe him, I owe you, I'm thankful and I'm sorry, but I can't change what happened, that he decided I-” He cuts off. “I can't keep being punished for letting him save me, and it's not helping anyone that you keep trying to me make me be.” His heart skips a beat at his own leveled accusation, and he squeezes his fist again, harder and harder, until the pain floods, to try and calm it down.

“Would you stop doing that?” Sam's voice snaps and then softens. “I'm just - I'm not going to like hurt you. You don't have to, it's not good, that's not good, okay? It's a bad way to deal.”

He lets his hand uncurl, fall open, red indents still pressed into the skin of his palm and turns, jaw set to look Sam dead in the face, the absurdity of it all pushing him forward. “You are hurting me.” He says matter of factly. “If you want to help me deal, stop stressing me out.” Sam's face is frozen before his own, and though it's easy to put up a front of emotionlessness that's second nature, inside his heart is pounding even faster. “If you don't want me to feel like you're a threat, stop acting like one.”

The lingering of the moment seems to last a small eternity, but finally Sam’s face collapses and something breaks behind his eyes, a well of the too-familiar harshness of self loathing springing forward and bleeding out of all the corners, a burst of Sam’s own rushing pain. It doesn't please him to see it, turns a frown across his own face, but he doesn't say anything to appease it either, just waits.

“I'm sorry.” Sam says finally and he doesn't run from the apology, doesn't pull back or away, takes it like a soldier, like someone Steve would have faith in. It's relieving really, another small light at the end of a long tunnel, he just wants Steve to have this little piece of his world back without strings, he just wants himself to have Wakanda back as his sanctuary without predators.

“I've been pretty wound up and I took it out on you, which isn't cool, because I know you aren't…” He hesitates around the words. “That you're trying and it's been hard for pretty much everyone whose ass wound up back here. I - I was, am” He amends at the raise of Bucky’s brow. “pretty angry and you're right, it’s been easy to put that on you. But I should know better and I do. I haven't been following through on a lot of things I ought to be. And I haven’t been respecting you like I should, and I’ve been acting out, which is pretty shitty and basically unhelpful.” Another sigh heaved and he repeats. “So, I’m sorry.”

Maybe, it's the first apology he's ever gotten. Steve's apologized, of course, but Steve never hurt him, never wronged him, is only sorry in the universal sense of the word, because he’s sorry for everything, which is nice, and T’Challa apologized too, but with more action than word, both different from this strange injection of personhood that strikes him now. A small hum of recognition from an outside force that he's somehow deserving of being apologized to, that he'd said he wanted to be treated differently and this judgment had been accepted by another person without reason to accept it, unless there was some kind of appreciable value to his existence, which not only could, but should be seen as something worth acknowledging. It tastes almost like a kind of power, heady and elating.

“Okay.” He says quietly, because apology and forgiveness are words that are still making meaning inside of his head. He can't tell Sam he understands, because he's not sure how he feels. But he's glad, immensely, that there's a change. Some constant thrum of tension, aching in his skull, quieting.

Sam hesitates and adds, conciliatory. “Guess I deserved the pink hair.”

He lets himself smile a little at that. “Guess so.”

“We’ll work on it.” And then amends, a little abashedly. “I mean, I. I will work on it.”

"Okay.” Bucky repeats again, still working through the budding sensations that are rushing through him, trying to separate them into understandable components that he can put in front of him and digest. But he thinks he probably doesn’t want to do that here, wants to sit somewhere alone to try to parse out the sensations, maybe outside, under the warm rays of sun. Before he goes though, he forces himself to surface again, to add. “Maybe you should talk to Steve.”

Sam's eyes narrow a little, not suspicious, but like he's trying to trace the thoughts. “Pot meet kettle.” He gives finally, and Bucky shrugs.

“I think you’re mad at him too and he probably deserves to know that.”

“And you're the expert.”

“At being fucked up? Yeah.” It's a little rough, a little wry. Sam seems to want to fight against it, but catches himself and doesn’t reject the concept.

“Maybe.” He allows, no exactly pleased, but thoughtful. “I'll think about it.”

Bucky pushes himself to his feet, because really, as far as gold star accomplishments go, he's run himself ragged for now, and he doesn’t want to be in this space anymore just now. So he doesn’t have to be basically, so he gets onto his feet. Sam's eyes track him, measured, but he says nothing more.

“He needs you too.” The words toss over his shoulder on his way out the door, and curiosity won't let him leave without peering over his shoulder.

Sam's fingers are clenched at his sides and his eyes are closed. He looks tired, but he doesn't look angry anymore, like he has every other minute of the time they've spent here, something softened in the standoffish lines of his body, something sadder coming over him instead. For anyone but him, with his heightened everything, it would be hard to see the slow tracks of tears spilling down the planes of his cheeks. It leaves him feeling strange, so he looks away, turns himself to the hallway.

And Sam apologized. It sits, hard to look at directly, but warm, in Bucky’s chest.

As he shuts the door behind him, he dares to let himself think it’s possible they'll all find a way, in the end, to survive, maybe even to live.


End file.
